


Area secure, Commander

by starkeeper



Series: Reda Shepard [6]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Akuze, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Thresher Maws (Mass Effect), set somewhen in ME1, the aftermath of, this is where they run into a thresher maw and it's not good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24950383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkeeper/pseuds/starkeeper
Summary: Shepard didn‘t yell at people, especially not at those she outranked. Until the thresher maw hit them on Antibaar. Until Tali carelessly said area secure, Commander. Because she had never encountered a thresher maw before. Because she did not know that they barely managed to stand the first wave, but were nowhere near surviving this yet. Because she did not know about Akuze.
Series: Reda Shepard [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/253930
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	Area secure, Commander

**Author's Note:**

> This totally happened because Tali said "area secure, commander" when really, it wasn't, so they all died. Thresher maws stress me out. A lot. 
> 
> Big shoutout to guileandgall for betareading. <3 Thank you, dear!

** Area secure, Commander **

Shepard didn‘t yell at people. Especially not at those she outranked.

She was snarky, sure, and she wasn‘t very diplomatic most of the time. If really triggered she could also snap at people with utmost precision and make a soldier piss themself. But she didn‘t yell at anyone. Not in out of combat situations. She yelled at enemies, not at individuals.

Until the thresher maw hit them on Antibaar.

Until Tali carelessly said _area secure, Commander._

Because she had never encountered a thresher maw before.  
Because she did not know that they barely managed to stand the first wave, but were nowhere near surviving this yet.  
Because she did not know about Akuze.

When they managed to kill the maw what felt like months later, minutes that had Shepard age several years at least, she turned to Tali and yelled at her. She bawled at her full force, in a deafening volume, and in a most hurtful way. For a moment Garrus braced himself to physically intervene, because with this sudden verbal outburst none of them had experienced in Shepard before, he expected Shepard to tackle the Quarian any following second. That was what usually happened in his time at C-Sec. That was the immediate impression Shepard made in this moment. One more word from Tali and she would find herself on the floor or with a bullet in her head.

Instead, when Shepard was done bawling at her, silence filled the Mako. Silence and stillness. Shepard was still staring down at Tali, breathing heavily, her face reddened and her hands painfully clenched around the steering wheel. Neither Tali nor Garrus perceived this specific stare as any less threatening nor any better than what they just experienced, but both were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

Then, with sudden movement jerking through Shepard’s body, her head snapped to her hands, while she began to agitatedly fidget with those damn life-saving seatbelts that held her in position, kept her caged into the front of the cramped Mako with walls closing around her more and more with every aggressive beat of her heart, closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and she couldn‘t get those bloody-

When she finally freed herself, she heaved herself out of the pilot‘s chair, blindly stumbling against Garrus to her left, making her way through the too tight, too dangerous, too enclosed cabin. Shaking hands reached for her helmet, nervously trying to connect the seals at the right points. Seconds later Garrus and Tali were hit by a wave bone-freezing cold when Shepard slammed the button to unlock the door and stumbled outside.

Still in shock, Tali‘s first reflex was to follow her, but Garrus held her back.

„Don‘t“, he said in a tone Tali had never heard from him either.

Tali might just have stumbled into this situation blindly. He hadn‘t.

He knew about Akuze.  
He knew about thresher maws and their fighting behaviour.  
He had been here before, with Shepard. Different world, same enemy. Not so similar reaction. He knew maws were solitary creatures. The scanner went silent once they killed this one, so for the moment, Shepard was safe outside. At least as safe as she could be in this very moment. He kept an eye on the scanner the whole time.

„What was...“ Tali‘s whole body language mirrored how upset she was, unsettled, but most of all confused. „Keelah.“

„You okay?“

„... I guess?“ She stared behind her at the closed door. Just a couple of millimeters of metal that protected them from the cold outside neither of them was biologically equipped for, and that lay between them and their commander like a mile long walk through a blizzard right now. „Is she?“

Garrus sighed, mandibles flicking tightly. „Yes. It‘s... ghosts from the past.“ They all had those. And these could even make someone like Shepard lose it for a while.

Tali‘s view jumped back to the front, staring in the direction where the plain was located. „What was that thing even?“

„A thresher maw.“

„And she‘s seen them before“, Tali concluded. Garrus' grim gaze spoke volumes and had her let out something that sounded like a sigh. „I didn‘t mean to-“

„She knows.“

„Is she really okay?“

Garrus activated the comm. „Are you alright, Shepard?“

They got only silence for an answer. After a while, Garrus made another try.

„Shepard? Do you read me?“

„Loud and clear.“

Her voice was offish, the struggle of fighting against the biting wind, the cold harsh outside and the everlasting haunting of ghosts from an earlier life clearly audible.

„Do you need our assistance?“

„Negative.“

Garrus turned the comm on standby again, much to Tali‘s dislike. He tried to put aside her clearly second-guessing stare.

„She just needs a couple of minutes.“

„It‘s been twelve already“, Tali replied, not even trying to hide her concern. „It‘s freezing outside, Garrus. Even for her.“

„She‘s tough“, he said. Not that tough though, he added in his thoughts. How could she be?

When Shepard got back into the Mako another fifteen minutes later, hands stiff and cheeks red but the rest of her face rather pale, she was calm again. Tali threw her a questioning look, ready to make space in any possible way any second, but Shepard didn‘t even take notice of her. Instead, she pushed past her glance, past unspoken words, past the expectant silence between her and Garrus, and back to the main seat again. When she started the Mako‘s engine, she also started talking, collected, distant, repressed.

„They‘re carnivores that can lie dormant for millenia.“

The Mako started up, little elegantly bouncing over the uneven ground around the Prothean ruins where it had rested for the last thirty-two minutes.

„Always hungry - imagine sleeping for centuries and more and BOOM“ her hand smacked on the controls, having Tali instinctively wince again, but Shepard went on completely calm, „then you would eat anything, dextro or not, just to survive. Reproduce via spores that can survive prolonged periods in deep space and atmospheric re-entry. You never know where you‘ll run into them. Makes it twice as fun.“

Tali interrupted her without thinking about her question before asking it. „That‘s why you avoid open spaces.“

It had always been something that had her wonder, because the Commander had a quite pragmatic way of driving, so to say. If there was a quick way between two locations and an easy way, it never was the easy one that they took, much to the suffering of every other squad member accompanying her on ground missions. Shepard even seemed to enjoy that and considered it good driving - Tali couldn’t judge that, never having left the passenger’s seat in the Mako. But how hard could it be, really?

But when there was a quick _and_ easy way they could take? Shepard always took the detour.

Until they investigated a crashed fighter today with some frozen corpses and dead Geth around - hardly at the outer borders of the plain empty space in front of them. They hadn't even touched the plain, but apparently, they had been close enough.

Shepard kept her eyes strictly on the displays in front of her, but Tali saw how her body tensed up again, even if it was less than before. Her voice was just a little more repressed when she answered her.

„Usually, they don‘t make it so close to the bottom of the surrounding mountains.“ She tried to shake it off again, getting back into a lecturing mode, trying to keep her focus on what was important. The maw was dead. No need to dwell on it any longer. „When you run into a thresher maw, the area is never secure until either you or they are dead. So you better learn about it, understood?“

At the end, Shepard sounded like a superior, a tone that she almost never used towards them.

„Understood“, Tali replied mildly intimidated.

Shepard went on adding facts about that species before unbeknownst to Tali, as if nothing had ever disturbed their otherwise peaceful cooperation. As if Tali had just seen something suspicious on the extranet and Shepard read about it and forwarded the knowledge. Just that she didn‘t read about it in the first place.

„I didn‘t mean to bawl at you“, Shepard concluded her lecture in a somewhat softer, but still tense voice.

„I know.“

The Mako stopped, softly rolling out when Shepard decelerated. When they had stopped, she turned towards the quarian.

„I‘m sorry, Tali. It wasn‘t your fault and I shouldn‘t have-“

„It‘s okay, Shepard. Really.“

Shepard stared at Tali in silence. This time, there was nothing threatening in her, nothing scaring, nothing unseen. Just honest regret and sorrow, a pain that Shepard couldn‘t hide and that Tali had not known about.

Until Shepard eventually nodded, stiffly, tense, with the quiet promise not to bawl at Tali ever again.

None of them spoke a word until they reached the Geth outpost they initially went to Antibar for.

**Author's Note:**

> Huh. Now I wonder how yelling translates in a universal translator at all. Like, is there an electronic voice just turned louder, or does the tone change? Are translators able to translate emotions as well, or are we back at Elcor speaking patterns? Very upset, how could you say that. Also, how does angry yelling sound like with Quarians or Turians? So many questions… that I did not think about when I wrote this. :D I just assumed angry yelling translates very clearly with the universal translators in ME. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! A little feedback is always most welcome. <3


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